Jurisprudence Commons^™

The Dark Side Of Grutter, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Liberals have generally cheered the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger as validating the continued use of affirmative action in the struggle against racial injustice. But the Supreme Court's modern race cases rest on a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary racial discrimination. From Brown, to Bakke, to Grutter, the Court has advanced a colorblind conception of racial equality that treats race-conscious affirmative action as constitutionally suspect, because it deviates from an aspirational baseline of race neutrality that lies at the core of the equal protection clause. However, race neutrality is a hopelessly artificial concept in …